[mdx] MDX & expressing communites-of-interest

[Josh Howlett]

> Josh Howlett wrote on 2009-05-19:
> > However, for aggregator-to-end-entity flows I think it will be 
> > necessary to adopt whatever approach will work best (or, at least, 
> > require the least modifications to) existing end entity 
> implementations.
> > 
> > I am therefore inclined to think that an aggregator should publish 
> > communities to end-entities at URIs that are either Well Known 
> > Locations (for RESTian methods) or service endpoints (for 
> SOAP methods).
> 
> I'm not sure how that coincides. Without knowing the specific 
> use cases you have in mind for identifying membership in a 
> community, I can't say what particular implementations would 
> or wouldn't support, but it's definitely not the case that 
> either of those methods is supported today by Shibboleth at least.

I explained myself poorly, in that case. The 'publish communities to
end-entities at URIs that are [Well Known Locations]' was meant to
describe the practise that Shibboleth-based federations currently use to
distribute their metadata aggregates.

Thinking back to the Arlington meeting, I recall that there was
consensus that this was the most appropriate mechanism for the
aggregator -> end-entity case.

The point that I'm stuggling to articulate is that it might be necessary
for MDX to express community membership in different ways, depending on
the types of the entities participating in the metadata exchange (e.g.
'tagged entities' for the aggregator -> aggregator, which are sorted
into 'community aggregates' by aggregators for publishing to
end-entities).

josh.

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